Study: Google tops voice assist shopping list

While voice assistants are still a relatively new option for digital shoppers, most who use them aren't turning to Amazon, or their Alexa or Echo devices. Instead, according to new data out from RichRelevance, Google is the most turned to voice assistant.

RichRelevance has released their new shopper survey and among the more interesting results are that most US shoppers don't trust the results of voice assistant searches. Researchers polled just over 1,000 shoppers in May to come to their conclusions. Among the more interesting findings are these: that 70% of US shoppers haven't used a voice assistant to shop and nearly half don't trust the results of the current players in the space. including Google and Amazon.

"Search is an essential part of the commerce experience," said Mike Ni, CMO of RichRelevance. "Sessions using search account for 45% of ecommerce revenue, yet our study indicates that many companies still under-deliver when it comes to relevance and accuracy, particularly on mobile. While conversational commerce has risen to the top of retail buzz, voice search still in its infancy for shopping. With many retailers looking to go beyond last-generation keyword based search, brands and retailers would be best served by focusing on personalization and image search while positioning themselves to win with any developments in voice-based search."

The researchers also found the Amazon is much less popular with younger consumers, which will be a problem as Millennials are much more likely to have used voice search. Millennials and younger shoppers are most likely to have used Apple's Siri or Google Assistant to shop, with these pulling in about one-third of Millennial shoppers. By comparison, only about 10% of Millennials have used Amazon's Alexa.

In addition, about one-third of those polled say they are 'unsatisfied' with mobile search results and also say they get 'worse search results' on mobile devices than they get on laptop or desktop computers.